


Ghosting

by paenteom



Category: League of Gentlemen (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-08
Updated: 2011-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-27 02:25:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paenteom/pseuds/paenteom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t want you to go, I don’t want Dave to go, I want it to stay like it is right now, just us and our little group. I’m happy, Phil. Aren’t you happy?”</p><p>You're not sure you have an answer to that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosting

(This is how it begins:

You’re on the road with the other two; it’s another poor job with poor paying and the atmosphere in the car is tense, the annoyance almost tangible. Dave is driving, muttering curses under his breath, while Ollie just stares ahead out of the windshield, not even attempting to decipher the map anymore. You’re counting yellow cars, but your attention keeps slipping and you find yourself staring at Ollie instead, at the way his shirt collar nestles against his neck, the way he’s worrying at his lips with his teeth, the way the sunlight catches in his hair like a stubborn button might catch on clothing.

You start to think about it, really think, all those years you wasted in this car, all those hours you spent on trying to make him happy, and the realisation hits you, tears right through your heart like a bullet – if you could choose, you wouldn’t change a thing.)

 

1.

You keep to watching him from afar since the air is almost static whenever you’re near him, making your skin prickle and the hair on the back of your neck stand up. He’s been agitated the last few days, absent-mindedly cleaning his glasses with his shirttails and biting his lips. You worry about him, more than usual, but you don’t say anything because he hates being mothered, even by his oldest friend.

 

2.

You’re not sure you want to have this conversation right now, but there’s nothing you can do about it, and why do you keep stumbling into fights with him all the time? You’re slowly losing your patience with him and his goddamn idealism and it’s all you can do to keep from shouting at him.

“They are kids, Ollie. Kids. They don’t care about any of that stuff, they probably don’t even want to watch it in the first place! Why can’t you just be realistic for once?”

His laugh scares you, it’s bitter and raw and biting and it sounds so unlike him, so unlike the usual breathless chortle you know from him.

"Realistic? If I was realistic I wouldn’t even attempt all this anymore. I can’t be realistic when I don’t even feel like I have any ground under my feet. I'm ghosting, Phil. I haven't been real for months."

And you wish you could tell him that for you he is the only real thing in a fleeting, fickle world (cars rushing by and seasons changing and him in the middle of it, always him, Ollie, and the way his hair curls over his ears, Ollie, and his quiet voice, always soft even when he is shouting, Ollie, and the almost sound it makes when his eyelashes collide with his glasses; it makes you want to take them off and kiss him, kiss him until you're both breathless with want and life and the sheer, raw feel of it, kiss him until the grey around him drains away like rain in the quiet hours of the morning) but you can't, because it would change everything. You keep quiet, just slowly extend a hand to touch his arm and stroke softly over the scratchy wool of his jumper until he pulls it away, mutters "Stop touching me already, you bloody poof." But he keeps close and you can still feel the faint sensation of it on your fingertips, and maybe things have changed already.

3.

“I don’t want anything to change.”

He sounds wretched and he is blinking repeatedly behind his glasses, and you can’t believe he is actually crying. Ollie hasn’t cried in all the years you knew him, not when his mother died, not when Linda left him and now you’re sitting in the back of your old van and there are tears rolling down his face and dripping onto the cracked leather seats (and you can actually hear them collide with the smooth surface, drip, drip, drip, and it’s like each tear is another childhood dream, another hope unanswered, and you swallow around the lump in your throat and stare at the salty water running towards the edge of the seat because you couldn’t possibly bear to look at him, not when he’s coming apart before you).

“I don’t want you to go, I don’t want Dave to go, I want it to stay like it is right now, just us and our little group. I’m happy, Phil. Aren’t you happy?”

You're not sure you have an answer to that.

 

4.

"I’m tired of it, Phil. I’m tired of getting up in the morning for a day that doesn’t gain me anything, I’m tired of writing plays nobody cares about, I’m tired of your constant nagging and I’m tired of the same things happening every day. And don’t act like you aren't as well, you’re the one who’s leaving the company!”

He draws in a shaky breath and it’s like someone set the world on mute, draining the colour out of it, like clouds over the sun, and he’s almost inaudible this time.

“You're the one who's leaving.”

“Ollie, just because I’m not working for you anymore doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.”

“We were never friends, Phil.”

You close your eyes, fist your hands tightly around the hem of your shirt, swallow (once, twice, swallow down all the things you want to say; no, he’s right, you were never friends, he is the boy inside the glass house with his glass heart and cutting words, surrounded by cold hard walls, and you’re only allowed to long from afar, you’re the boy made from paper who’d crumble and tear under his touch) and somehow you manage not to shout at him.

This time you don’t just quietly slip away and close the door behind the ugly words scratching at your skin. You take a step closer and another one, until your noses are almost touching and you catch his wrist as he tries to push you away. Your breath fogs up his glasses and so you take them off, slip them off his nose and stuff them into your pocket. It’s hard to find your voice but you manage it somehow, although it sounds off and not like you at all, which is ironic because what you’re about to say is probably the most truthful thing you have said to him in a long while.

“You’re an idiot. But I love you anyway.”

Then you kiss him.

 

(This is how it ends:

The room is dark and smells of sweat, the only sound is the slide of sheets and your heavy breathing (and it’s like that story you loved as a kid, the lonely tin soldier, in love with the beautiful boy out of porcelain; you don’t remember much but it ended with them melting together in flames and you think it might have been a little like this because you’re burning up from the inside). And you desperately try to keep your eyes open because you can’t possibly miss a second of this; the way he moves under you, his tousled hair sticking to his forehead, the contrast of his dark eyelashes against his pale skin.

You drag your fingers over his lips to stop yourself from twisting the sheets and a soft moan escapes him, not more than a sigh, the first sound he made since this all started. And in all these years (the first time you fell from your bike, your first kiss, the first taste of alcohol burning hot in your throat) you’ve never felt so alive; your heart beating so fast that you feel like your chest isn’t big enough. It’s all too much and too little at the same time and the only thing you can do is curl your fingers in his hair and hold on while the world around you slowly crumbles, while you fall apart and lose yourself in the whiteness of his skin.

Later, when the colours slowly seep back and light drips into your vision like coffee through a filter, when you pick up your clothes and tiptoe out of the room as quietly as possible, when you greet him the next day and he doesn’t look you in the eyes, recoils from fleeting touches, when he says “Look, Phil, let’s just- you know it was a mistake, you know that as much as I do.” (and of course you know it and it’s a sick feeling like bile in your throat and it tears and claws at your skin and spreads from your fingertips to every bone in your body and it sinks in until you’re feeling like you’re sinking yourself); later when it feels like there are suddenly whole worlds between you, you feel like you have come together wrong.)


End file.
